Boogie woogie, piano dance music born near the end of the 19th century in the lumber camps of East Texas, is the true daddy of jazz, be-bop, ragtime, R&B and rock ’n’ roll, Charles says.

The post-Civil War era music is known for its rumbling low end — created by a constantly moving, repetitive bass line played with the left hand on the piano — and its polyrhythmic chords, embellishments and runs played simultaneously with the right hand. Its roots are African.

Ezra Charles (on piano) presents "The Story of Boogie Woogie." His son Jakob Helpinstill plays drums.

Ezra Charles (on piano) presents "The Story of Boogie Woogie." His son Jakob Helpinstill plays drums.

Photo: Courtesy Photo /Courtesy Photo

Was Texas dance music the secret source of rock ’n’ roll?

1 / 2

Back to Gallery

“Boogie woogie is the most influential musical genre to ever have originated in Texas,” said John Tennison, a San Antonio psychiatrist, musician and boogie woogie expert who consulted on the new off-Broadway musical and film, “Boogie Stomp!”

Tennison and other experts believe the music’s birthplace was Marshall in northeastern Texas, not far from Texarkana. Tennison was born in Texarkana and says “boogie woogie was part of the musical landscape” there.

In the early 1870s, Marshall was known for its thriving logging enterprises. It became the first city in Texas to have electricity after the arrival of the Texas and Pacific Railway, and it had a large African-American population.

Boogie woogie piano was a way to keep workers in the lumber, railroad and turpentine camps after their work was done, say musicologists such as Tennison and Peter J. Silvester, author of “A Left Hand Like God: A Study of Boogie Woogie.”

Charles, whose rock ’n’ roll roots go back to high school in Beaumont in the late 1950s when he played with brothers Johnny and Edgar Winter, disbanded the Ezra Charles Band in 2014 to research and develop “The Story of Boogie Woogie.” The two-hour show is part concert, part history lesson of “the happy blues” and part stand-up comedy.

“I really put in some woodshedding,” Charles said. “It’s an odd form of music because it has no melody, and you can’t sing it. You can’t whistle boogie woogie. You have to play it on the piano.

“The blues piano players morphed what they had been playing into something that was a lot more energetic and had a better beat to it. This really was the beginning of what would become rock ’n’ roll. If there was no boogie woogie, there could have been no rock ’n’ roll. Boogie woogie led to jazz and swing and be-bop and jump blues and then rock ’n’ roll.”

Charles knows his subject, but he is hardly professorial.

In the early 1970s, he was comedian Robert Klein’s pianist.

“For him, I was just a pianist,” said Charles, 71. “But what he did to me was subject me to hours and hours and hours of watching a master comedian illustrate comedy timing. I try to incorporate as much of that as I can because it’s just more fun when everybody is laughing.”

Charles’ 18-year-old son, Jakob Helpinstill, who plays drums in the show, is his straight man.

Boogie woogie originally was known as Texas-style piano. Counted among its most famous proponents are Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, James P. Johnson, Pinetop Smith and Professor Longhair.

New Orleans drummer Jimmy Ford toured with and once managed Professor Longhair. Ford said the left hand of a boogie woogie pianist is the engine of the music, and Longhair’s left hand was a marvel, among the best ever.

“He was playing that big boogie woogie bass line. It was almost like a calypso,” said Ford, whose band DiNOLA plays shows at R Gallery and The Mix on Friday.

“Allen Toussaint called him the Bach of Rock. He was just incredible. It’s just a different attitude. It’s one of those root musics of popular music today. Rhythm and blues came out of jump blues, and jump blues came out of boogie woogie. That’s the root of rock ’n’ roll, of R&B, of hip-hop, rap — of everything.”

Bandleader Jim Cullum was born during the big-band boogie woogie craze of the 1940s. He recalled the first time he ever heard it played by a real East Texas boogie woogie pianist. It was at Tucker’s on the near East Side. A teenage Cullum bought a Coke and watched intently.

“It’s a very powerful and very important connection to jazz,” Cullum said. “It’s all inseparable. But boogie woogie piano was very early, very early. It’s one of the ingredients.”

Likewise, jazz pianist Aaron Prado says he is “really in awe of anyone who could do it well,” and that the style is “a lost art.”

“The big difference is with a lot of modern jazz players, all the action is in the right hand,” Prado said. “With early rock ’n’ roll, with boogie woogie, with stride, with ragtime, left hand is the band. It’s the rhythm; it’s the heartbeat.”

“It’s just cool music,” said Travis “D.T.” Buffkin, a pianist and singer-songwriter who draws from boogie woogie. “I can’t play it. Not at all. Nowhere close.”